Posts by Hiram

Please contact me if, while reading the French sources, things don't make sense. I know it's a Romance language and the book is written in a style that intellectuals in France are fond of, but which makes use of long-winded metaphors and bizarre expressions that require some familiarity with the language. I'm fluent, and yet I needed to consult an online French dictionary frequently while reading.

Elayne the best English language source for Onfray, and a great introduction to his intellectual legacy is Hedonist Manifesto. Here is my review:

http://societyofepicurus.com/reasonings-on-…nist-manifesto/

I can't speak for him, but On happiness and worth, I'll refer you to the study by Dr. Christakis that I mentioned in my book, that showed that happiness is contagious, and the comparison between this study and another study on the correlation between money and happiness that showed that a happy friend adds aprox. $20,000 worth of happiness to our lives. So that is the "worth" of a happy friend.

Onfray does not revile utilitarianism and cynicism, for example, as much as he reviles Plato. He reserves most of his venom for Plato, and insofar as other philosophies/ers resonate with his counter-history of philosophy, he affirms them. For instance, he calls himself "a Nietzschean, insofar as he takes Nietzsche as a starting point in philosophizing". And he's a huge champion of THE BODY and its instincts and faculties (and ergo of libertarian individualism, versus the societal pressures and conventions that impose inauthenticity).

So -- whatever else we may say of him-- he has brought many thousands in Europe and the French speaking world to the study of Epicurus with his gospel of pleasure and his call to re-write history from an Epicurean perspective. Everyone that I've met in the Spanish world that knows about Epicurus is pretty familiar with Onfray. By contending with his words, we inject ourselves into thousands of discussions about Epicurus that are happening all over Europe and Latin America.

Quote from Cassius

Thanks Hiram -- I don't read French but I think I will go ahead and get a copy. The description of contents on this page looks pretty comprehensive, and Google translate generally does a reasonable job with French.

https://www.librairiecosmopolite.com/livre/1221170-…teurs-gallimard

This was a bit complex to read sometimes (huge tome with little letters and dense content) but also EXTREMELY rewarding in terms of how much I got out of it.

This is also my main source for Polystratus' argument for moral realism, which is very relevant today with so many books trying to root morality in nature (Sam Harris, "The Atheist and the Bonobo", "The moral animal", etc.) All these intellectuals are trying to reinvent the wheel. The Epicureans drew from the Letter to Herodotus and the classification of inherent and relational properties of bodies to infer a natural morality where pleasure and aversion (and other ethical categories) are relational attributes of bodies. If we could modernize this discourse, we may be able to greatly and credibly influence this modern discourse.

Yes, my source was the French book, which I went out of my way to get years ago because it contained many works not available in English.

Les Epicureans has no "writer". It is a translation of ancient works with commentaries from MANY intellectuals and sources, compiled and edited by two men, among which DeLattre seems to have been the central figure because he seems to focus solely on Epicurean / Philodeman sources. Les Epicureans is basically a French-language Encyclopaedia Epicurea. And it feels like a an Epicurean Bible because it has all the ancient sources.

Daniel DeLattre is here:

http://cnrs.academia.edu/DanielDelattre

and he's tied to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research

http://www.cnrs.fr/

and judging from his papers on academia it looks like he's almost exclusively focused on the Herculanean papyri.

Also, keep in mind that Michel Onfray is HUGE in France (and that his main narrative is "counter-history of philosophy from the perspective of the friends of Epicurus and enemies of Plato"), and that citizens of the French Republic tend to have a much more robust intellectual life than many other countries, so it's very likely that this author is very intimately familiar with the details and important issues to Epicurean Philosophy and seems like he's committed to preserving EP for future generations.

The other editor, Jackie Pigeaud, died in 2016. Here is an essay in homage of his memory that you can google translate if you're into the philosophical subject of melancholy:

http://theconversation.com/humanisme-et-m…e-pigeaud-68951

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Pigeaud

and here are his works

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1042996.Jackie_Pigeaud

Quote from Elayne

As far as addiction goes, of course I have assisted in the treatment of teens, since that is part of pediatric practice, and for that reason I have done a fair amount of research. I think the evidence is most supportive of a process like the one Stanton Peele outlines. I have had several conversations with Stanton on the subject, and I had the pleasure of reviewing an advance copy of his book on developmental aspects of addiction, which is coming out in May. The general gist is that people do not become addicted when they are enjoying pleasure through their innate pleasure pathways-- they tend to have no interest in the mimics, or if they do use them, they do so without becoming addicted. https://peele.net/

So he's involved in the SMART program!? This is great. I first read of the SMART recovery program in an issue of "The Humanist" that also included an article I wrote for them. I remember that the editor took an interest in my mention of Epicurean cognitive therapy because she felt that it related to other essays that were going to appear in the same issue. I'll share some tweets on this.

How the Gut Affects the Brain

https://www.reddit.com/r/Epicureanism…he_digital_age/

Quote from Elayne

... And then the intrinsic pathways of pleasure vs the extrinsically mediated pathways-- I am tempted to call these natural vs unnatural, but that might be a stretch. There seems to me a definite difference between our pleasure systems responding to reality vs a molecule bypassing part of the intrinsic pathway to mimic our innate pleasure systems.

I don't think taking pleasure in an external object is "unnatural", but it is an interesting question whether we inherently trust intrinsic pleasure more than extrinsic pleasure (I imagine you mean here the serotonin or oxytocin that our own brains produce versus the substances that we get from things we eat, etc.)

This goes to a question that I've considered in the past, that part of what it means to be Epicureans is to train ourselves to become self-sufficient in our pleasure (which I don't think excludes external pleasures, just includes the confident expectation that we can have pleasure).

Some people may say "objective versus subjective" but this may be a way to disguise their distrust of and alienation from our neurologically-cogent, direct experience. I don't think this alienation is healthy, so the arbitrary ideal of "the objective" is suspicious to me. The key here is that Epicurean philosophy seeks to reconcile us with NATURE--all of it, our own (internal, and "subjective") nature as well as external.

Concerning the addiction question, I refer you to principal doctrine 20, which includes the adage: "our nature does not shun pleasure", and sets the mind against the body in a "mind over body" logic that is applied in Epicurean therapy. The founders of Epicurean Philosophy observed that our body / our unconscious nature / our id (to use Freudian language for our drives) does not shun pleasure. It is the role of the mind and of reason to understand clearly the limits set by nature to our pleasures and our desires, and it is the role of philosophy and education to civilize us enough to choose and avoid wisely.

So yes, the dangers of addiction exist, but the founders seem to have been confident that, under normal circumstances, one only needs a philosophical education to avoid its dangers. So my opinion is that a person who is always high or drunk has a pathology, a disease and possibly a form of neurosis or psychological illness (and today this is the consensus among professional who treat addiction).

This reminds me of an example I've also used in the past re: our craving for candy, which is sometimes owed to the YEAST in our bellies. Gut bacteria are organisms that have their own agenda and drives, and they can sometimes hijack the neurons in our stomach to make us crave things that our bodies do not need. They are operating as a type of disease or parasite in doing this. Ultimately, our desires and cravings are bodily rooted, and unconscious, and (if they are harmful) we have to apply reason (and sometimes dietary changes and other treatments) against them.

Our friend the Cambridge Unitarian chaplain shares, again, Nail's interpretation of Lucretius, and further takes the Lucretian Venus as a divine role model for his Unitarian-Epicurean spirituality.

https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2019/03/mother…alizing-of.html

Yes the gut has its own "brain". I read that the neurons in the gut are numerous enough to form a brain the size of a cat's.

Anandamide is the molecule of pleasure, which the brain naturally produces

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandamide

I find a lot of the information on this article fascinating for several reasons:

1. It's in high concentration in cacao (chocolate, in its raw form) and, of course, cannabis
2. The study that involved piglets and obesity reminded me of Horace the poet. This portion basically says that fats are necessary to form this chemical, which makes sense, since Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats are known to keep the brain healthy, the neurons well-connected, and therefore contributes to a healthy and happy brain.
3. Epicurus said that pleasure starts in the belly and, lo and behold, the article says that "bile acids – which are mainly involved in the adsorption of lipids in the small intestine – modulate its biogenesis" ... in other words, the pleasure molecule is born in the small intestine.

I enjoyed reading it and I can see the argument and the idea. I loathe Paul just as much now as I did before, and I share many of Nietzsche's views on Paul.

https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/sev…schu-tradition/

https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2017/05/20/hap…ieth-were-here/

The later Roman Epicureans had a tradition of placing this on their tombstones:

Non fui

Fui

Non Sum

Non Curo

"I was not. I was. I am not. I don't care."

https://www.academia.edu/38682258/The_E…work_card=title

Quote

"At one and the same time, we must laugh and philosophize" - Vatican Saying 41

This is where we are "laughing philosophers". We tear this false Christian narrative to shreds with laughter:

https://eidolon.pub/swinish-herds-…ns-efdc9ca6db2d

Quote from michelepinto

The Italian world "dogma" means: "Principle that is accepted as true or just, without critical examination or discussion: proclaim a dogma: in Catholic theology, truth revealed by God or defined by the Church as such, imposed on believers as an article of faith."
In Englis the meaning is: "A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true."

Epicurus said that the sage would be a dogmatist (in the English meaning, as we have nothing to do with the Catholic faith).

The very first thing said in Epicurus' epistle to Herodotus is to make sure that words correspond to things clearly observed in nature. We can't use "dogmatism" the way that Catholics and other Platonic, superstitious sects use it. We have to (re-)define words according to nature, and this was done time and again by the founders of EP.

This is because the entire system is based on the study of nature, like science but in the realm of philosophy so as to include ethics. The Nature of things has real, inescapable repercussions on human happiness.

So that (while the God issue is a fair one to question, and I'm one who does), we do have reason to claim many truths if we use the canon (the senses and faculties) and the methods and checks and balances provided to us by nature itself. So we are dogmatists in the philosophical sense, because we are based firmly on the study of nature--which is to say, reality. While there's no need to be arrogant, we do believe people should philosophize with their feet on the ground

Quote from Cassius

Hiram you are much better read in Darwin than am I. Did Darwin ever even cite Epicurus or Lucretius approvingly in his main works for any aspect of his ethics or epistemology (or his physics)? Did Darwin even have an ethics that he promoted as proper, or is all the "Darwinian morality" stuff that people added on as their take on the logical implications.

Darwin was a naturalist, not a philosopher. He did not elaborate ethical repercussions of his finding, as a scientist. He stayed within his realm, and only posthumous interpretations of his SCIENCE by philosophers have been done (sometimes leading to error, as in the case of Nietzsche's mis-understanding of evolution and adaptation via natural selection as if it led to a "superior" or "higher" man or form of life necessarily).

Darwinian "morality" (whatever that means) is an invention of post-Darwin intellectuals.

But note that in nature we see competition, but also cooperation, and that all life exists within **systems** that involve mutual benefit and symbiosis (mutual inter-dependence at many scales), so that so-called "social Darwinism" is a HUGE politically-inspired error. If there is anything that deserves to be called "social Darwinism", it's networks of mutual aid and mutual benefit.

Darwin does not cite Epicurus or Lucretius, as far as I know. He did follow the Lucretian method of FIRST observing nature, then reasoning explanations for what he sees, only based on what has been observed.

Darwin was Christian.

Lucretius could not have been a Darwinian for obvious reasons. He did posit natural selection, but not via Darwinian adaptation and evolution.

I do appeal to Darwinian theory when I explain the pleasure faculty here, because I feel that it sheds light on many aspects of Epicurean ethics:

https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/the…n-introduction/

I have a chapter in my book on "hedonic regimen", which includes foods and practices tied to studies that I came across related to the science of happiness.

The celebration of the Twentieth with close friends should also be a tradition that we try to revitalize and create cultural and culinary practices around, well beyond cheese and bread and water. Perhaps we should find sympathetic vendors who manufacture customized "Happy Twentieth" candles and decorations. If anyone knows of them, please let me know.

Then there's the problem of self-sufficiency, which should inspire in us long term existential and autarchy projects: starting side hustles or side businesses, financial planning, minding and managing one's business--this is not separate from the practice of philosophy and we should learn to make our productivity a source of pleasure. We are supposed to have (and, presumably, support--if we are really led by "mutual advantage" principles) Epicurean businesses.

Quote

At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business, while never ceasing to proclaim the words of true philosophy. - Vatican Saying 41

http://societyofepicurus.com/epicureanism-busts/